‘Big Love:’ Worst. Dates. Ever.

Not surprisingly, dating a guy and his three wives and a revolving roster of their children is every bit as awkward and weird as one might expect. And having the gals there isn’t the sole problem — Bill’s idea of dating conversation, at least when he’s dating with the whole clan, appears to be his love of The Weather Channel. (It seems there was no real wooing of Nicki since she was basically handed over by her father, but how the heck did he ever manage to land Barb and Margene?)

If, for some reason, Anna does wind up becoming Wife No. 4 — which, based on the preview for next week, looks unlikely — she can’t say she had no idea what she was getting into. The argument-filled poolside dinner exposed a lot of the tensions among Wives 1-3. And being left alone at the table while they all slipped off to the kitchen to continue their squabbling more privately was a small picture of what she can expect. Though, of course, if she does come into the family, she can also count on being pregnant, as the Henricksons push for growth. Though Barb wouldn’t refer to Anna as a “brood mare,” that would be one of her roles, since Margene is refusing to have another baby right now and Nicki is secretly taking birth control pills.

Speaking of that, Nicki hasn’t been pulling her weight on that front, and everyone has finally gotten vocal about the issue. Nicki even insisted on a trek to the prison to get her father’s blessing, though that was probably another Adalene-assisted manipulation to try to get Bill to help with the efforts to take out those worrisome Jane Does.

Among the gusher of secrets that came pouring out in this episode was the certain identity of Jane Doe #3 — Kathy, Joey’s second wife — and the probable identity of Jane Doe #4, Rhonda. Rhonda really isn’t a surprise (though the fact that she has apparently been living in a house with a bunch of boys and other teens kicked out of the compound), but Kathy is. Joey and Kathy are keeping that a secret from Wanda. That would seem to be a good idea, given what a wild card Wanda is, but it’s also a dangerous idea. All those whispered conversations between Joey and Kathy seem to be pushing Wanda to the edge, though it’s probably a good sign that she went to Alby for help before serving her sister-wife a lemonade/anti-freeze cocktail.

And just who has been lining up all those Jane Does for the prosecution against Roman? His power-mad son, of course, whom Kathy sees as a protector. (How scary is that?)

Away from the compound, another big secret, lurking in the Henrickson households as the adults fret about Nicki’s apparent infertility: Sarah is pregnant, something she doesn’t appear to have told anyone. I suspect she knew about the baby when she sent Scott packing and that was one of the reasons for that sad breakup scene.

Barb’s cancer scare — which turned out to be nothing more than a scare — seems to have sharpened her belief in Bill and in the Principle, two things she has seemed intermittently ambivalent about.

There was one odd moment in the episode that didn’t ring true, something that doesn’t often happen on this show. At the end of the episode, Bill called his mom to tell her that he had been able to go to a public event with all his sons. Bill has made it a point that he is not talking to her — the only reason for that scene was to have the camera pull back to reveal that Lois, while chatting merrily with her son, has his horrible father bound and gagged. (Something he definitely had coming, by the way.) It seems like the writers could have found a better way to reveal what Lois did with Frank after dragging his unconscious body out of her living room.